


Both Are Worth It

by mydogwatson



Series: One Fixed Point: 2020 Advent Stories [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Flirting with death, John and danger, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28018281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: John faces the greatest danger of his life one night in 221B.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: One Fixed Point: 2020 Advent Stories [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2035588
Comments: 18
Kudos: 111





	Both Are Worth It

**Author's Note:**

> Well, despite RL throwing a few things at me, I am getting #9 up only a couple days late. And I will catch up soon. I hope you are all finding some joy in this odd holiday season. I just say thank the gods for Johnlock! Always love hearing from you and I will get to comments very soon as well.

Life is risky, love is dangerous.  
Both are worth it.

-Anonymous

John was seven when he first began to understand the concept of danger.

Not that he was actually looking to do anything risky. And it seemed like a good idea at the time.

John just really wanted a kite. Then, unexpectedly, there it was. Red and blue and glittery, sitting in that tree, apparently waiting for someone brave enough to climb up and retrieve it. Well, no one had ever accused him of being a scaredy cat, had they?

Still... It _was_ a very high tree.

And Harry advised against it. “Don’t be a ninny,” she said from her perch on the nearby bench. She was reading some book with dragons on the cover and eating a Mars Bar.

He looked up at the kite again, saw the tail fluttering in the breeze, and wanted it desperately.

The lowest branch was easily within his reach and he pulled himself up on it.

“If you fall, I’m not going to pick you up,” Harry warned him. “And I will tell Mum.”

She always was a tattler. John ignored her, his full attention on the next branch up and then the one after that as he got ever closer to his goal.

And he almost made it.

His fingers actually touched the tail of the kite and the flush of triumph made him grin.

Then his foot slipped and his hand tried desperately to grab onto something, anything, to keep himself from plunging to the ground. But all his fingers closed around was the stupid tail of the stupid kite, which didn’t help at all. Dimly, he heard Harry yell something, but then he was flailing through the air and finally there was only blackness.

He woke up in hospital. One leg was broken and three ribs were cracked. Everything else hurt, too. And he was in the kind of trouble that would keep him from telly and sweets for a long time.

But as John lay in the hospital bed, hurting and labelled a bad boy, he remembered that fleeting moment of victory when he first touched the kite’s tail. And he smiled to himself.

*

John was not an idiot.

No more so than any other sixteen-year-old boy, at least. God knew he had enough experience with drunks [read: father and older sister] to know how to avoid their various madnesses. Which included never getting into a car being driven by a person who’d had far too much to drink.

But it was a cold winter’s night, the early Christmas party had been loud and long, with far too much alcohol flowing, and John had no other way to get home. Unless he wanted to walk five miles along a dark country road. Which he did not. And Kenny insisted that he was fine to drive, so unless Watson was some kind of pussy, he would get into the fucking car.

So John got into the back seat, crushed between Mick and some blonde girl he didn’t know.

Kenny turned the music [Black Sabbath, of all things] up much too loud and they were off.

He was driving ridiculously fast. John craned to see the speedometer, but all he could tell was that they were going over a hundred KPH. On a narrow dark road. With a very drunk 18-year-old behind the wheel. John wondered if he might die tonight.

And yet...and yet.

There was something exciting about it as well. John didn’t want to die, of course, but this way to exit beat the way his grandfather had recently passed away, confined to his bed for months on end, in pain and confusion. Better, John thought, to go out quickly. Although, he realised, it would be better if there were some _point_ to it all. Saving the world or something. Dying like this would mean nothing.

Kenny almost missed a sharp turn and the car seemed to totter on two wheels for a moment.

The blonde was screaming in John’s ear, holding on to his arm so hard that it hurt.

John was frightened. But he was also grinning.

*

This time, it was definitely not his fault.

Blame the sniper. Or the army. Or the bloody queen, maybe.

But volunteering to go out on the patrol was not just a foolish game. It was his duty, right?

And if carrying the combat shotgun and dodging for cover as they moved through the mostly burned out village seemed more interesting than even surgery, that did not mean he was _asking_ to be bloody shot. Because up until the moment the bullet struck him, he’d been, well, not _enjoying_ himself, but he _had_ felt as if the very air around him was somehow charged. It was exciting, dammit.

Now, as he lay in the mud, his blood seeming in much too great a great hurry to leave his body, John was trying to convince himself that this, at least, was not a useless death. Surely it served some kind of higher purpose or why was he here in the first place?

He could almost hear his sister’s voice, her words slightly slurred, as usual. “Always looking for the bloody cheap thrill, aren’t you? Looking for the danger. Someday it will catch up to you, Johnny boy.”

Horrible as this was, he decided, it still beat dying bored by life.

“What the fuck you grinning about, Doc?” he heard Mullins ask, as the sergeant leaned over him.

John thought he replied, “Life, you bastard,” but he couldn’t be sure because he passed out.

*

For a long time afterwards, the most exciting, dangerous thing he did was open the drawer and stare down at his gun.

Then, he found himself jumping from rooftop to rooftop and being bound up in an explosives belt, as well as being kidnapped too many times to count. And he loved every terrifying minute of it.

But John Watson realised that he had never really understood the true meaning of danger or the real grip of fear until this very moment.

He drained the last of the whisky from his glass and set it, empty, on the mantle. Turned off all the lights, but the ones on the Christmas tree, just because he liked the thought of them illuminating the night. Then, he left the sitting room and went to stand in front of the closed door.

For two minutes, he just stood there, staring at the surface of the wood. This was the most dangerous thing he had ever done and there would be nobody to pick him up if it all went wrong. Finally, he took a deep breath, feeling as if he were about to climb a high tree, recklessly speed through the night, pick up his combat shotgun again.

After one more moment, he raised his hand and knocked on Sherlock’s bedroom door.

Then he smiled.

**


End file.
